A, B and C
by Discoabc
Summary: It was just a big jigsaw puzzle. Except I'd assumed I knew what this puzzle was meant to end up looking like when I'd been completely wrong. OC-insert Slight AU
1. A, B and C

_A, B and C are travelling through the Sahara Desert. One night they pitched their tents. A hated C and decided to murder him by putting the poison in C's only water supply. B, without knowing A's intentions or actions, also decided to murder C. He drilled a tiny hole into C's water supply so the water would slowly leak out. As a result, C died several days later from thirst. So who was the murderer: B because C never did drink the poison put in by A and so would have died even if the poison had not been put in, or A as once A had poisoned the water C would have died even if B had not drilled that hole?_

* * *

A baby is not born with perfect vision. It is mostly blurred and it is incredibly difficult for them to make a distinction between two objects. In order to focus on anything it must be within 8 to 10 inches of their face.

Luckily, a newly born infant does not know that his/her vision is particularly bad, nor is mentally capable of forming a proper opinion on anything and is therefore unaffected by this.

Unfortunately, I knew the difference between good eyesight and bad eyesight and was also perfectly capable of forming an opinion on most things, therefore being affected horribly by my sudden bout of near blindness.

My initial reaction was not to scream or cry, it being instead to stay deathly silent and freeze up completely. I was so terrified by the lack of vision that I was beyond the point of screaming in fear and could only try and stay as still as possible as my body was being carried by something I couldn't see.

What I didn't know was that my lack of movement or noise made people come to the conclusion that something was wrong with me and caused panic to ensue. I had no idea what was happening to me within my first couple of hours of being a newly born infant as my body was whisked this way and that, having tubes forced into me and then being taken out, needles being thrust into my arm and all sorts of things being done that I didn't understand.

After a while I began to cry silently in frustration and fear, these cries getting louder almost against my will as I gave in to the instincts of my body. Eventually, I must have been deemed perfectly healthy as I was put down in one place and not moved again. In a way, I wish I was as something huge finally came into the small area where my vision would focus and, upon realizing it was a gigantic face, I screamed even louder.

This may sound comical but, rest assured, it most definitely was not. I was practically blind, scared half to death and, despite all my screams, I couldn't see anyone coming to help me. Instead all I got in response to my shrieks were huge faces coming up close to me and sounds coming out of their mouths that made no sense to me.

It was like a horrific nightmare except I was fully aware that I was awake and what was around me was real.

I kept on screaming for about a week, fighting my body's want to sleep a lot and staying up for as long as I could. When I finally gave up shrieking in the face of all those who approached me, knowing that my cries of distress were not being fully acknowledged by these giants, I resigned myself to sleeping as much as possible. For, whilst these dreams were often the usual mess of randomness that dreams were meant to be like, every now and then I dreamt of the normal life I wanted back. Going to school with my friends, tutoring a couple of them every week, drawing in my room, eating dinner with my family, everything I was used to.

After three months of this, one of the giants set me down somewhere and, in front of me, I saw a baby. My vision had been steadily improving and now, whilst everything still seemed somewhat 2D to me, I could make out the main characteristics of this infant. Wisps of dark hair, practically black were on their head, big brown eyes staring ahead of them and chubby, short fingers reaching forwards towards me, much like this alien hand attached to my body I still had trouble recognizing as my own was-

I started screaming again.

Before the end of the week I finally managed to get my head around the situation I was in. I had become a baby again, although I hadn't simply had my mind go back in time and restarted my life. This was clear to me for two reasons:

When I was born, touch screen tablets definitely did not exist, nor were holograms used in everyday life.

I was brought up in England and my parents spoke English as their first language. This place was _definitely _not England and the giants around me spoke what I was guessing to be Japanese.

I had bright green eyes before.

The only conclusion I could draw then from these series of events was that, if I had not somehow implanted my memories into my younger self, I must have been reincarnated or something along those lines. And, if I had indeed been reincarnated, then I probably had died.

This revelation was the most shocking as, you see, I have no recollection of dying. If I had I would have figured this all out quicker but the last thing I remembered was accidentally falling asleep as I tried to finish off my latest painting. It had been close to three in the morning but I'd wanted so desperately to finish in order to show my friends it before I went off on holiday. I never had finished it because I was so tired but that was my last memory.

After the shock had died off I had been confused and angry. I couldn't have just simply _died_ in my sleep! I had been a fairly healthy eighteen year old girl and was careful not to let harm come to me so how on _earth _had I died?! Had I fallen off my chair whilst sleeping and hit my head? Had I been one of those hugely unlucky people who one day just shut down for no reason? Had I been _murdered_?

What made me most angry was that I'd never know. How exactly could I ever know? Its not like you can somehow reverse reincarnation. You can't make yourself un-dead. I had to resign myself to the knowledge that if I was dead then the circumstances of my death would never be disclosed to me. Neither would why I remembered my previous life.

On the other hand, if I hadn't died and this was some weird other sort of event that had occurred then I still wouldn't know what had happened unless I woke up again in my previous body. So I might as well assume the worst case scenario until proven wrong. And the worst case scenario was that I had died and was stuck here indefinitely.

At six and a half months of age my vision had improved vastly yet again. My vocal chords also developed enough so that I could start to try and copy how people spoke. My parents seemed delighted by how I had advanced from first screaming to not making much noise at all and now to making the typical baby garble they clearly found adorable. I did feel slight guilt for having made the first six a a bit months of my life with them so stressful as I had come to care for them.

It was hard to be distant from people of whom you relied so desperately on to survive and so, as a sort of apology, I made certain to 'learn' to say 'mama' and 'papa' fairly quickly.

But, if I were brutally honest, I was closest to my older brother Arata. He was only older than me by a year and a bit and so was too young himself to treat me like an infant. It was incredibly frustrating to have all these adults treat me as my physical age when I was anything _but_ so I found it incredibly relieving to be around him. He would not pull those stupid faces or put on a ridiculous voice to try and amuse me, instead more often than not wanting me to play with him in some way.

Arata was also useful in the sense that I could gauge how much intelligence I should show. Whilst being labelled as a child genius wasn't exactly considered a bad thing in my books, I really didn't know enough about what this world was like. I knew the year was 2090 and that was almost 80 years after I had died.

And a _lot_ can happen in that time.

What if there were laws I didn't know about? Social rules that had changed drastically? Even in my last life I had struggled a little with social situations if I didn't have anyone I got along with around. It had even been debated as to whether I had a mild case social anxiety. So, if I did display a high level of intelligence that was unnatural for my age, would I be able to even cope with being thrown into such a society which had rules I was unaware of?

No. Of course I wouldn't.

I would do better to at least wait until I knew as much about this new society as I could before diving in and becoming a source of attention. In order to achieve this, all I had to do was make sure I was always one step behind Arata. If he figured something new out then I had to 'figure it out' at the very least a few days later, at the most a few months.

By following this rule, I portrayed myself as a quick learner but by no means a child genius.

Learning Japanese (I had been right all along about this being Japan) and being able to speak, read and write it were the only things I didn't have to pretend to take time to do. In my previous life I hadn't been the worst at learning new languages, in fact, I had learnt German up to an almost fluent stage and a little bit of French. But Japanese was a _whole _new kettle of fish.

For starters, there are no words in Japanese equivalent to the articles 'a', 'an', and 'the'. The meaning has to be derived from context. There are also no plural forms in Japanese either, which was incredibly confusing for me to get a grasp of. Possessive forms of nouns or pronouns do not exist too and so whose item is it has to be deduced yet again from the context. Future tense adds to the list of things that are non-existent, making context even more important. It was also extremely frustrating at the start to try and translate what people were saying into English as they were speaking as the verbs come to the end of the sentence (although admittedly I became accustomed to this as German often did the same).

Then comes the fact that whilst there is only one English alphabet, the Japanese use three: Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji. The English language then has only 26 letters whilst an average Japanese adult has to remember at least 2000 Japanese characters of the 8000 or so in regular use, making learning to read so agonizingly slow.

I put off learning to write for a very long time as a result.

Even by constantly using the touch screen tablet that belonged to my brother, which had various learning aids meant for him, I only learnt to speak fluently (although not letting others catch on to this fact) at the age of two and a half. After this, I tried to speak more often to my parents, attempting to glean so information about this world off them. Reading was still a big struggle for me and so I couldn't just go and search up things on the internet-not that I would be able to anyway as whenever I tried to go on the internet I was locked out of it and my parents informed of what I was trying to do. I'd always get told off afterwards because I have to be supervised by a responsible adult when using the internet.

I didn't ever go very far outside my house either so there wasn't much information I could get from outside too. My parents were alas the only sources of information about the world I had left.

"Mama," I began one time, watching as my mother put down this strange tablet that both her and my father had but Arata and I were forbidden from ever touching. "What's the world like?"

I often started my conversations that I intended to get information from with a question that's answer wouldn't really mean much. It made it seem like I was just being a curious little toddler asking random questions that had no point to them. By then building from there, I could eventually get to the questions I wanted to ask without it seeming like I was thinking too hard about anything, it just being a natural progression of the conversation. "Oh, Natsuyo," she smiled a little at me, picking me up as so to place me in her lap. "The world is exactly like you think it is! You live in this world, don't you? Or are you off in fairyland?" She teased.

I leaned back against her arm. "Well...is the world _big_?" I made exaggerated hand movements as I peered up at her with curiosity I didn't need to fake.

"The world is very, very big." She informed me, an arm around my waist squeezing me gently.

"Does that mean that there are lots and lots and lots of people?"

"Yes, there are lots and lots and lots of people." She nodded.

"Where do they all live then?"

"Well, there are lots of countries in the world," my mother spoke incredibly slowly, pronouncing everything clearly so I heard every single word. "You know how we live in Japan and Japan is very big?"

I nodded, trying to keep up the facade of a child who couldn't comprehend the hugeness of everything.

"Japan is one of these many countries and there are over one hundred of these countries, some even bigger than Japan!"

"Woooow!" I dragged out my exclamation of surprise and wonder. "But if they're all countries then why is Japan called Japan? Shouldn't it just be country?"

"Every country has a name like every person has a name." She smiled a little at my silly question.

"So is there a country called Natsuyo then?"

"I don't think so sweetie," she chuckled a little.

"Then what are they called?"

"Things like America, China, France and England."

I hummed thoughtfully. "I wanna go to another country!"

There was a slight pause before my mother spoke again. "Why, what's wrong with good old Japan?" Her tone was teasing but a little strained.

"Bleh, I see Japan everyday!" I ignored how silly I sounded because of course I saw Japan everyday, _I lived there_. "I wanna see America!"

Another brief pause. "Maybe one day, sweetheart. Now Mama has to go talk to Papa so be a good girl and go play with your brother, okay?"

"_Fine_," I huffed, half to keep up the act of a toddler, half in real frustration. I had wanted to ask more questions but been cut off before I'd had the chance. Hopping down from her lap, I watched as she picked up her tablet again with a strained smile on her face.

Later, after my mother had talked with my father, any chat about foreign countries was strictly forbidden.

* * *

When I was three and Arata was almost five we had been playing games together as per usual. Unlike normal siblings, we did not quarrel and as a result stayed incredibly close to each other. Also, unlike what I had expected, Arata was not to start school until he was five. This something I found marginally surprising considering how in the Japan of my time you started kindergarten at the age of three.

So we both spent most of our days with only each other for real company-our parents only really overlooked our games and we still didn't go out very often.

This time we were playing this game which involved a cube that displayed questions on it. If you answered correctly you'd be rewarded with a sweet. If you answered incorrectly then you'd be given some sort of silly command you had to follow like 'spin on the spot whilst barking like a dog'.

Of course, I was exceptionally good at the game mostly because they were such easy questions for me but Arata tended to struggle sometimes. To be fair, Arata was actually incredibly intelligent for his age and was only caught out by riddles. But riddles that involved logic were what I excelled at and so I easily got them right. This naturally frustrated Arata a little as, whilst he thought he beat me at everything else in our lives, this game was the one thing I decided I didn't want to lose at-partly because the logical puzzles it harder the more you got right and I did so love them.

So Arata got jealous.

It was a perfectly normal reaction from him. I hadn't really expected anything less as he really wasn't mature enough to simply acknowledge that I was simply better than him at these things. As a result, I got used to his mini temper tantrums and sulks where he refused to talk to anyone (this only lasting for a few minutes before he got bored of interacting with no one). I also didn't get angry when this particular time he displayed his frustration by snatching the candy I had won by answering correctly and eating it himself.

I'd planned on telling him he shouldn't do that but I was pipped to the post by my mother who grabbed his wrist, clutching it so tightly that I could see her knuckles going white and Arata shaking. "_What are you thinking?_!" She half screamed at him, eyes wide open in horror. "Don't you ever steal! Don't you ever even _think _about it! Thoughts like that aren't allowed, _Arata_!"

"But-" Arata was cut off straight away by our mother.

"_Don't think up excuses! You know stealing is wrong!"_

I moved towards Arata, my own eyes wide in shock. _What the heck, he just stole a stupid sweet so why are you so angry? _"Mama, stop-"

"Don't do it ever again! Don't think about it ever again! Forget that stealing is even an option to you! _Forget it!_"

"I-I'm sorry…" Arata shook a little more, face twisted so that he looked as though he were about to cry.

I expected it to end there with another warning but it didn't."I don't care about that! _Forget about stealing! Promise me you'll forget about stealing!_"

My brother opened his mouth, most likely to say that he would when our father entered the room, one of the forbidden tablets in his hands. "What's going on? What's all this shouting about?"

She turned to him with horror still on her face. "He _stole_ from his sister." She half whispered the word 'stole' as if it repulsed her to even say it to another adult.

Again, I expected it to end there with my father calming down my hysterical mother but instead I watched his face gain an expression much like hers and drop the tablet in his hands. "_Arata_!"

"I-I'm sorry! I s-said I was sorry!" My brother burst into tears but neither of my parents consoled him.

"Don't steal!"

"Don't think about stealing!"

"How could you do such a thing?!"

"We've been protecting you this entire time but you still thought about and did something like _that_?!"

It was surreal, watching two grown adults scream at a crying child.

I wanted to tell them to stop, to yell right back at them for doing such a thing to a toddler, especially my own brother, but my eyes instead became drawn to the tablet lying on the carpet where my father had dropped it.

And everything then clicked into place.

_We aren't allowed to talk about foreign countries._

_We aren't allowed to go on the internet without supervision._

_We aren't allowed to go outside much._

_We aren't allowed to even think about stealing._

_We aren't allowed to touch those tablets our parents always carry around no matter what._

**PSYCHO PASS**

Name: Kawabata Natsuyo

Mental Colour: Light Grey-Blue

Pass Level: 17.3

_Oh god._

_Oh god please no._

Without a second thought, I began to cry alongside my brother.

.

.

.

.

.

.

_There is no correct answer to this riddle. All that is certain that C would have died at one of their hands no matter what._

* * *

**I **_**adore**_** Psycho Pass.**

**And what happens when you adore something?**

**Fanfiction. Fanfiction happens.**

**(Or maybe that's just me…)**

**I'm not sure if anyone has really done am OC-insert for Psycho Pass. I will therefore do one. Hopefully this doesn't crash and burn horribly, haha.**

**Depending on whether anyone shows any interest in this, it might be quite a long fic or I'll make it a short thing. I'm leaning towards the latter anyway since I already have fics up and running I really should be focusing on =_=***


	2. A Mother

_A mother is 21 years older than her child. In exactly 6 years from now, the mother will be exactly 5 times as old as the child._

_Where's the father?_

* * *

_Psycho Pass_

_A psychological anime set in a dystopian society designed to in fact be a utopia where crimes are stopped before they can even take place by taking those with high crime coefficients out of society and isolating them in rehabilitation centers or executing them._

I wanted to scream.

I settled upon crying my eyes out instead, albeit silently, too horrified to make any loud sound.

Imagine, being trapped in a universe where your own thoughts can make you be deemed a criminal. Where your biology can contribute to the likelihood of you being a liability to the 'perfect' society. Where you can be shipped off to a rehabilitation center and live the rest of your life in isolation before natural death or execution, agree to be an enforcer and treated like an animal instead of a human or just be killed on the spot in the most brutal, horrific way imaginable.

_Trapped there. Indefinitely. With no way out ever making itself apparent to you._

My parents were still screaming at Arata and hadn't even noticed my crying and how my body was shaking violently.

I'd seen dominators. I'd seen what they did to people.

I'd seen what ran this society too. A collective entity made up of the brains of those whom cannot be judged like normal people and definitely have at least two psychopaths in there-or at least will have around eight years from now.

I'd seen how desperate people were to maintain a healthy mental state and how their desperation turned to hopelessness and murder. I'd seen what had happened when they were placed in the right situation, which enabled them to act however they wanted and how everyone had almost immediately resorted to killing others and other crimes.

I'd seen how ugly the society the Sibyl System had created already was.

_Get me out._

_Please, get me __**out**__._

_God, no, this can't be happening and my age-no, god no, I'm going to be only in my twenties when everything gets worse and __**Makishima is coming**__, __get me out, so many people are going to die no, please no-__**Kirito Kamui **__will get me if Makishima doesn't and I'm going to die, oh my god I'm going to __**die**__ and up till then all I'll be doing is crying over how my own thoughts could get me killed-please no, no, __**no**__._

My breathing was getting erratic and I focused my vision on my parents again. My father was still shouting and my mother was repeating over and over that Arata was _never going to think such thoughts again _whilst his sobs got louder and something inside of me broke.

They were more worried about his crime coefficient than his happiness.

_The Sibyl System comprises happiness in order to achieve a perfect society where no crime is ever committed and all talents are utilized to the fullest._

_And everyone follows Sibyl's judgements on how their life should be led._

In that moment, I'd never sympathized with Makishima's ideas about the Sibyl System more.

* * *

Arata and I never did play the riddle game again.

Our father took the game away so that no thoughts that could cloud our hues and raise our crime coefficient would arise in our minds. Arata's lower lip had wobbled when it had been taken away since he and I had both been fond of that game even if I was almost always the one to win at it. But then he remembered how the adults had screamed at him and didn't say a word.

When I'd later seen our parents' psycho passes that they'd left on the kitchen table still on whilst in a hurry to catch a programme on the TV of the future, I'd felt a sense of morbid satisfaction when I'd seen their hues getting murkier and crime coefficient get higher after the incident.

Logically, I knew it wasn't their fault, that it was this stupid society's fault for pushing so hard for everyone to have stable mental states that people got distressed because of it and wanted desperately to ensure their children wouldn't have the same problem. But, at the same time, there was the issue that my parents didn't seem to have the idea ingrained into their minds from the very start of their lives that screaming at a child who didn't know the difference between good and bad was wrong.

It was difficult not to feel therefore a little pleased when they were punished for something I knew to be so morally wrong.

I also caught sight of my own psycho pass. My crime coefficient had gone up to 25.4.

* * *

When Arata started school a few months after the incident, I was all but left alone at home with a holo-servant in the shape of a bear to take care of me.

My parents couldn't stay off work any longer as it was 'recommended' by Sibyl to get back to work as soon as possible after having children as making use of your talents would make you feel less stressed out. Not that they said this to my face but Arata heard about it from other children who were less protected from the world by their parents.

Being alone in the house sometimes made me almost forget I was in a horrific universe where the society had gone to hell and you couldn't really be happy when you were too absorbed in protecting your mental state. I read books I'd steal from the bookshelf in the sitting room that no one touched for years ("Who even reads real books anymore? We should just get rid of it." My father once said to my mother who argued that she had grown up with such books and was not willing to part with them even if she didn't read them), watch silly cartoons and anime, draw and paint.

Art at first had been a reminder of my situation as my chubby fingers had had difficulty holding a pencil or paintbrush and the control I had over my body wasn't the same as it was in my old eighteen year old body. But after practicing and practicing, I could finally do practically everything I had before, almost making me feel like I was sitting back at home, my real home, and safe.

* * *

I was aged five and just about to enter school when one morning I was whisked off by my parents to a huge hall filled with several other children of my age. My parents almost immediately disappeared and I stood there, looking around and trying to figure out what was going on.

My parents rarely took me outside. It was obvious that this was in order to protect me from the world that was geared almost entirely towards keeping a healthy mental state. Therefore, I would not become worried like they had-not that this worked in the slightest considering I knew probably more about this society than they did.

But now I was in a room filled with other children they were all chattering amongst themselves loudly. My first thought was that this was some sort of 'getting to know your future schoolmates' thing but I immediately discarded the idea. There seemed to be too few adults around for this to be a possibility and this didn't seem like a school we'd all been crammed into.

A toddler ran into me before I could think up a second idea as to why we were there and the child immediately apologized before chattering loudly and quickly to me about how they'd seen _Hanako-chan _earlier and how they were super cute and how they said they were friends and isn't that awesome and they are some awesome now they're friends with _Hanako-chan _and-

I'd stopped listening by that point. Instead I was solely focused on the name _Hanako_ and how it was familiar. I didn't get the sense that it was very important what I was missing but the niggling sensation in the back of my head annoyed me slightly and I frowned in concentration.

_Hanako...Hanako..._

A sudden memory hit me of sitting in front of the hologram TV with Arata and two cutesy cartoons popping up. "_Hi, I'm Taro-kun..."_

_"And I'm Hanako-chan!"_

_"Together we are..."_

_Komissa-chan._

_The mascots for the Criminal Investigation Department._

My eyes widened slightly. What on earth were _they_ doing here? For god's sake, this was a gathering of small children! What part of this gathering would warrant the attention of the CID-

"_Attention_." My thoughts and the stream of chatter coming from the toddler opposite me were broken by a loud voice coming from the speakers situated all around us. It was somewhat unnerving to see all the children in the hall fall silent all at once and act this insanely behaved save some quiet whispering. "_The Medical Examination will begin soon._ _Please follow the instructions of the doctors and holos around you."_

It was then the doors to the hall all swung open at once and a swarm of holograms flew in, all seeming to be targeting one person each. They all had the designs of small animals with medic-like clothing and accessories, clearly made in such a fashion to be appealing to us as young children. "_Kawabata Natsuyo?_" A cat hovered right in front of my face, a cap with a red cross adoring its head.

I nodded in confirmation, bemused by the whole thing. The hologram acknowledged this and twirled in mid air, indicating for me to follow. I saw the toddler who I'd been speaking to engage in conversation with their hologram, gushing about _Hanako-chan _to them also as a bright smile stretched across their features.

I wasn't quite sure why I found it so strange that all the children were obediently following the orders they'd given. After all, even if this universe wasn't meant to be insanely safe and one could leave their doors unlocked without fear of theft, none of them seemed of the age to be very questioning. But I couldn't help but think back to when I was truly younger and constantly hammered with the idea of not blindly trusting everyone I met and, if I had even the slightest sliver of doubt, I should question and refuse to do as what I was told.

_Lessons like that clearly aren't taught here._

My hologram led me through a series of corridors and, slowly yet surely, the crowds of children I was walking with got thinner and thinner. Eventually, I reached an automatic door with a large 'K' printed on the glass, it opening to reveal a large room with toys and beanbags littering the place. Two boys-obviously twins-both made a dash for the robot figures and began whooping with laughter, other toddlers also scampering inside to make a bid for their own desired toys to play with.

The holograms followed each child, hovering just above their heads. The permanent smiles on their faces now seemed to take on a more sinister side and I found myself being a little creeped out by them. Deciding I didn't want to get into a fight with a toddler over a toy I wouldn't exactly be fascinated by, I chose to sit on a beanbag and think instead.

Something else was niggling in the back of my head now, it having done so ever since I'd been informed of this being all for the sake of a medical examination. This time it seemed far more important than the whole _Hanako-chan _affair, although I tried to reason with myself that if it really were such a significant thing, I wouldn't have let it slip to the back of my mind. It was at that moment I spied a shock of orange from across the room and my eyes with instinctively drawn to the burst of colour-

_Oh._

_Oh __**shit**__._

My head spun and suddenly I couldn't grasp onto my thoughts properly, only able to repeat my internal exclamation of surprise and horror again and again and again.

Then, the first stage came.

_It isn't them. I'm seeing wrong. My mind's playing tricks on me. I'm jumping to conclusions._

Denial.

Red hot denial that pulsed through me angrily, screaming defiantly at the part of my brain that dared to think otherwise. My eyes squeezed shut and I ignored the hologram that then started chirping my name with infuriating repetition. The lack of vision of my environment only served to make my furious denial worse. I started denying the reality of the situation I was in, started denying my existence in this disgusting, _disgusting _world. My chubby fingers (and I wanted them slender, wanted them like I remembered so _bad _right now) started pressing themselves over my ears, attempting to block out the calling of my name.

_That isn't my name, I am not Kawabata Natsuyo, I am not here, they are not here-_

"Hey, are you alright?"

A young voice, so young, so _painfully _young, made me open my eyes and remove my hands from my ears.

The second stage had come.

_Oh god, it's them. No, they're so young, no, no, no-_

Despair.

I despaired as large brown eyes examined my form, watching how I curled in on myself as waves upon waves of horror hit me again and again. It was despair greater than what I'd faced as a result of the incident with my parents and Arata.

"_Whaaaat_, cat got your tongue?"

Their voice was laced with childish amusement and I lifted my head a little to see their gaze flicking between the cat hologram and me, clearly proud of their little joke. My mouth opened to reply but my voice got stuck in my throat. Their face was filled with untouched joy and pure happiness with the world around us.

The third stage.

_How dare they. How dare they do this. How dare they rip away everything starting with his childhood and ending with his life._

Anger.

"_Kawabata Natsuyo, are you alright?"_ The infernal cat hologram asked for the billionth time and I regained my voice, turning to face them.

"I'm fine. Just a little sleepy." To emphasise my point, I rubbed my eyes clumsily, the hologram seeming satisfied with my response.

The boy in front of me grinned toothily. "So you _can_ speak!" He flung himself into the beanbag next to me, looking the perfect picture of a five-year-old mischievous boy.

_Because he is._

"Your one is really boring!" He announced, pointing at the hologram floating above my head.

Trying to not break apart, I mustered a small smile back. "Your one is cool."

His eyes lit up. "I know right! Foxes are super, duper cool!" The boy puffed out his chest proudly, his hologram hovering just above him.

"Yeah-" A thought hit me.

_Help him._

_You can help him._

A billion and one things crammed themselves into the forefront of my mind, all demanding that they be voiced immediately.

_Tell him about the helmets._

_Tell him about Makishima._

_Tell him about the Sibyl System._

_Tell him about Kasei and to not let Choe Gu-sung get in and see the truth._

_Tell him the rest of his short, short life is going to be hell._

I looked up at the holograms floating above us both. The smiles were not longer simply creepy and sinister now. They were terrifying.

Because how on earth could I possibly begin to give someone information that could save their life when we were being watched like this? It was already difficult enough trying to find the words to convey the seriousness of the situation and to be constantly listened to, constantly scrutinised, just made it..._impossible_.

The fox hologram suddenly flew down so it was in front of the boy's face. _"Kagari Shusei, follow me."_

He let out a whine. "But I only just _got _here!" Puffing out his cheeks, he got to his feet.

_Oh god, say something! Say __**anything**__! You're going to let him die! It's going to be your fault if he dies now!_

_**Say something!**_

"Bye!" He waggled his fingers at me as he grinned, eyes shut as he did so.

My mouth opened as his eyes did and I formed words with my lips, but my voice was so starved of breath I could hardly hear it myself.

Somehow he managed to make it out though and cocked his head to the side, still smiling. "Well, yeah, of course!" He spoke as though what I'd said was ridiculous and it was.

It was so ridiculous that, as he walked through the doors after his hologram, I put my head in my hands and resisted the urge to weep.

* * *

It was only as I sat in a chair, the doctors running through their final few bits of their examination, that I realized what I'd been going through after my meeting with the boy.

The four stages of grief, which usually happened as a result of the emotional pain of loss.

The first stage: Denial.

The second stage: Despair.

The third stage: Anger.

I'd yet to reach the fourth. I felt somewhat disgusted with myself for not being able to. After all, it wasn't as though I was going to do anything now to try and prevent what would happen to him in the future. I didn't want to die. I wanted to be selfish and only care about whether I made it through this life even though I was someone who could change everything.

I didn't want this responsibility, I didn't want to have it be on my head if I didn't give people the information they needed to be able to cheat death.

The fourth stage: Acceptance.

"_Crime coefficient: 33.8._"

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_He is with the mother. The child is set to be born 9 months from now._

**I'M ALIVE YAAAAAY**

**Started writing this months back and didn't finish it oOPS. So if you see a slight change in how things are being written its because I left it for a while before coming back to it.**

**Really want to get through child years quickly but stuff be happening and ugh.**

**Also shhh no I totally didn't get the idea about running parallels with the four stages of grief from Comical Psychosomatic Medicine idk what you're on about…**

**I know she didn't really go through the stages properly (the subjects of her denial, despair and anger are kinda off…) but it's just tying in with Kagari's death and stuff.**

**But yeah, be hyped for future chapters it's gonna be fUN I SWEAR.**


End file.
